Ragebait? That’s an understatement. Rage quit? Hell, yeah. Ultimate Grandma Simulator is a good Yin and Yang product, as it brings balance. For all the lovely old ladies that smell of Murray Mints, and in a soft, palatable world, comes an incredibly sadistic control system.
If you haven’t guessed from the videos and accompanying screenshots, gameplay is a physics-based experience comparable to Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy or the more recent Baby Steps, where you have to venture out into the incredibly dangerous world from the perspective of a geriatric.
We Don’t Have A Studio should change its name to We Don’t Have A Soul, as their vindictive approach to gravity is tormenting. When you start Ultimate Grandma Simulator, you just know you’re in for some patience testing, as that’s the nature of the game, but I didn’t expect it to kick in so quickly, and so unfairly at that.
The first thing to get to grips with is movement. The Grandma walks like she’s shit herself, and behaves like it too, subsequently running out of breath and dignity in milliseconds. Playing on the Steam Deck was fine – assumedly a controller, too – but perhaps the rhythm of tapping on a keyboard is best suited? Nevertheless, I literally plodded through the tutorial type area and reasonable ease, with the trick being rhythm.
Quite the surprise, but navigating steps isn’t as hardcore as imagined. Instead, the difficulty within Ultimate Grandma Simulator is random objects and the fiendish obstacles that dynamically get in the way. Seeing a Roomba follow a very steady pattern was a reasonable challenge to adopt a strategy of dash and wait, dash and wait; however, I was continually clipping furniture that was seemingly further away than what was presented. Worse? You respawn further away. Cue the rage quit. Well, not quite.
After obtaining a key to open a door to the outside world (note: you collect a key and proceed to kick the door in), you set forth on a mission to locate your grandson. The outside world is a big and scary place for those who haven’t touched grass or have one foot in the grave, and if that wasn’t enough, a new mechanic is introduced: breathing. Unless you press an additional button, Grandma will now pass out as she apparently forgets to breathe.
This is far harder than it should be, and now you’re alternating your footwork, avoiding all manner of hazards, but also keeping an eye on the breathing gauge. The number of times I aced an area only to forget to breathe was discouraging, as two was the more patient approach of step, step, breathe, then fumble. Again, in my experience, the clipping was more unfair than a question of being accountable or not. I’m not the best at these games, but I have the patience levels, and it was depleting faster than Grandma’s breath and her elasticity.
So, while Ultimate Grandma Simulator isn’t a stinker and may be the ultimate simulator, depending on your parameters, I personally found the physics and mechanics to be a little too far off kilter for it to be an enjoyable experience, or at least, rewarding enough to brave the big wide world. And, realistically, Grandma would have bailed on her mission way earlier if she knew she could just dip into her purse, call an Uber, and head into town for Tuesday’s bingo night, eh?
At the time of writing, a demo is on the Steam Store, so I recommend you give it a trial if you like physics (or gilfs) and don’t have a degree.
